An Intelligent System for Decision Support in Bioinformatics

The enormous array of computational techniques and data available due to today's use of high-throughput technologies can be quite overwhelming for researchers investigating biological problems. For any problem, there are many possible models and algorithms giving different results. We present a new Intelligent System that supports the selection, configuration and operation of strategies and tools in the bioinformatics domain. The Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking (ICAR-CNR) and the University of Palermo are developing an intelligent system that supports bioinformatics research. The system guides the researcher in building a data analysis workflow and acts as an interface by rendering transparent details regarding the implementation of the tools proposed or the configuration of on-line services. The system is thus a crossover between classical decision support systems (DSS) and recent workflow management systems (WFMS). It provides both the tools/services needed to resolve a problem, and also the knowledge necessary to justify the choice of specific strategies. This knowledge comprises expertise on the application domain, which is composed of heuristics and strategies derived from bioinformatics literature and experiments and/or provided by one or more human experts.